According to beer blogger Pete Brown, 2013 was the year craft beer went mainstream.

This is based on market research, his own experience and the fact that Hollywood has jumped on this beer-fuelled bandwagon with a rom-com, Drinking Buddies. With beer sales in decline and pubs closing, the big brewers are taking the craft movement seriously. Brown sees parallels with the music industry, where the major labels cashed in on indie music and left it a debased, meaningless term. Is craft beer destined for the same fate?

While the giants have started gobbling up craft breweries, Brown argues it is not about size or ownership, but intent. Do they want to help the sector grow with its integrity intact, or is it simply about making a fast buck until the next fad?

Molson Coors, whose brands include Carling, Coors and Cobra, has been edging its way into the market, buying the Cornish brewery Sharp's in 2011, and Ireland's Franciscan Well. A Scottish acquisition may be just around the corner. Hugo Mills, the firm's new sales and operations director for Scotland, says: "Three years ago, if a brewery had offered me a job I'd have turned my nose up. But there's been a massive cultural shift in the 'coolness' of beer. It's been like a tidal wave."

A few years back, Molson Coors seemed more interested in capturing the female beer market with its somewhat patronising Animée brand. Today, Mills talks of "an entrepreneurial shift where you're big, but act small."

The profusion of small, independent breweries in Scotland represents beer at its most dynamic, while the big lager brands look ever more stale. Mills accepts that "craft needs to be looked after and handled with cotton gloves", but feels the risk among small brewers is inconsistency from one brew to the next.

Meanwhile, I urge you to read Pete Brown's demolition job on the anti-alcohol lobby and its oft-repeated claim that booze costs society £21 billion a year, at petebrown.blogspot.co.uk.